Finding a good WordPress theme takes time!
Photo credit: Mike Kline
When choosing a new theme for your WordPress site, you’re obviously going to go with the look that you think suits your site best. But there’s more than looks to consider when choosing a theme. Below we’ll go over a few the most important things you should give a second thought to before choosing one theme over another.
Free versus Paid
A lot of what we’ll go over below will be the same whether you’re talking about a free theme or a paid theme. That said, of course you often get a lot more with a paid theme, and you should expect more. If you’re set on going with a free theme, however, then you should just know you may have to lower your expectations somewhat in some of these area, and might uncover some bugs along the way.
Simplicity wins
It’s important to note that, when it comes to WordPress theme features, more isn’t necessarily better.
Although many themes add a lot of nice functionality, you’ll want to be careful about getting your content stuck in a theme that can only really work in that theme. For example, let’s say you get a nice real estate theme. It has spots for all the info you want: images, cost, number of rooms, property taxes, school district, etc. Fantastic!
But what happens if you ever want to change out of that theme? All your information is set up for that particular theme to display it. If you get a new theme, it’s not going to use the same system as the old theme. And so even though that info is your database, it’s not easily usable by a different theme. It would take some special coding of the new theme, and quite a bit of time, to pull it out.
For this reason, you need to think about when to let the theme handle content and when you should get a plugin to handle it. With a plugin, you can simply add it to a new theme and have it show up. Don’t always be swayed by fancy presentations. Look at them closely and think hard about whether you’ll want the flexibility to switch to a different theme down the road, as your needs change.
Mobile Ready
These days you really should look for a theme that’s mobile-ready. In WordPress-speak this is usually referred to as a “responsive” theme (i.e. it responds to the device that the viewer is using, resizing accordingly).
According to a Google survey, 72% of mobile users said that having a mobile-friendly site was important to them. Sixty-seven percent of those users said that having a mobile-friendly site would make them more likely to buy. And we all know how important mobile users are these days.
Page Templates and Layouts
Page templates or different available layouts can give your site a lot of pop and a lot of power where you need it. For example, some themes may let you choose from four or five existing homepage designs. And some themes may even let you drag and drop containers in the backend to create your own page layouts. Another useful feature is customer header implementation, which will save you hours of aggravation when you need to modify your site’s basic look.
It’s important to note, however, that this is where it gets easy to leave your content stuck into a theme in a way that it won’t transfer nicely to another theme. That said, different page templates or different layouts will often be OK on that front. It’s not that your content will get stuck in the database (as it might with a real estate theme, as we mentioned), it’s just that it might not display as nicely on a different theme. While you can probably deal with that witha quick site-wide review, it’s worth keeping in mind.
The Theme Developer Reputation
Like everywhere else on the web, reputations are very important: a WordPress theme developer’s reputation is no different. There are a number of well-known developers, such as WooThemes, Elegant Themes, and StudioPress to name a few. While some may have their detractors (as any company does), their reputations are solid.
Therefore, if you’re going with a lesser-known developer, you’ll probably want to try to check them out. Search for their name along with other keywords that might indicate problems, such as “problem”, or “sucks”, or “doesn’t work”, or “exploit”, or “malware”.
Of course you’ll have to keep a few things in mind when you do this. One is that almost every theme is going to have issues, especially in its initial release. In fact, it may not be the theme’s fault, but someone is blaming it on the theme. It could be the hosting environment or a plugin or even user error. Still, themes may have issues. The main thing to look for is the response to the issues. Does the theme developer correct legitimate issues? Do they do it quickly?
It’s always worth taking criticism of someone else’s work with a grain of salt.
Look out for spammy links
All that said, one thing you definitely DON’T want to see in a theme is spammy links. There are a number of sites out there that have very nice looking themes – and all for free! The problem is those themes come with spammy links that you can’t remove. Some themes may even come with malware.
First, I would NOT advise getting a free theme from anywhere other than the WordPress Theme Directory, or a reputable premium theme developer. But if you decide to do it anyway, then you’ll want to check for potentially dangerous aspects of the theme with a plugin like Theme Check or TAC.
Support
Of course you’ll also want to check on what kind of support is offered. This, of course, is one area where you can’t expect nearly as much if you’re going with a free theme vs. a premium theme. And more support is often a very good reason to go with a premium theme.
Whether they *should* or not, things go wrong. If you don’t have the support to get through the issues you’re having, then your whole business could suffer.
At the very least, the theme developer should have a forum you can post in to get answers. They should have documents that help explain the different parts of the theme. The ability to submit support tickets and email is generally reserved for the higher end of a support package (some developers let you choose different levels).
Premium Theme Developers
As mentioned above, there are a number of well-established theme developers out there. At WPMU.org, we’ve put together a comparison of their theme offerings. If you’re thinking of going with a premium theme, visit us and take a look at what they have to offer.
Do you have a go-to WordPress theme for your sites, or do you prefer choosing a new theme for each site? Let us know in the comments!